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LinkedIn has a tool that lets you keep an eye on promotions, departures and new hires at a specific company. Updates are posted to your LinkedIn account and can be emailed to you as well.
Why is this useful? Because you can often zero in on a company's plans by reading between the lines. For example, if a company is hiring developers with a particular skill set (e.g touchscreen software, Cocoa, etc.) it's reasonably easy to connect the dots between the new investment and upcoming products. Some would label this "business intelligence," but there's a voyeuristic thrill to it, too.
Case in point: Wired's Gadget Lab used LinkedIn to draw conclusions about an Apple TV reboot. Here's the key paragraph:
Here's how you can do something similar:
(Note: I'm assuming you already have a LinkedIn account.)
1. Log in to your account and click on More > Companies
2. Search for the company by name. Click through to the company's profile.
3. The right side of the company profile features a Follow company link. Click this. A yellow star appears to the left of the link and the link text changes to Stop following.
4. Click the down arrow to the right of the Stop following link and select Notification settings to edit alerts, including email notifications. The settings menu will appear. Adjust as you like and save your changes. You're now following that company.
One caveat: Your snooping is not anonymous. People keeping track of a company are listed under the Followers tab on the company's profile.
